IN THE SHADOW OF THE EMPEROR 
Chris Dows

	‘Barrabas is dead. We need to go now.’
	Commissar Abdiel shouted over the screaming hiss of air from a hundred ruptures leaking life from the Merciless Fist. Cleaved in two by the space hulk, any hope of repairing the venerable vessel was lost. If they didn’t act fast, this once-proud cathedral of destruction would be their tomb. Abdiel scowled at the impeccably dressed sub-lieutenant, the kind of irrepressible and inexperienced junior officer he loathed, waiting for him to do something. 
	‘He could have survived, sir. He should be back–’ 
	The roof of the Dictator-class cruiser’s massive drop-ship bay emitted an ear-splitting crack, making the few surviving members of the salvage crew duck in unison with the two officers. All eyes darted upwards to search for the source of the dreadful sound, creating a second’s pause that they could scarcely afford. Recovering, they continued scuttling between the menacing silhouettes of a dozen Valkyrie assault carriers, desperately trying to get the battered drop-ship ready for flight. A score of bedraggled infantrymen looked on nervously in the middle of the deck, unsure what to do amongst the frenzied activity around them. 
	‘We have no time, Eutychus. Believe me, I’d rather have killed him myself but I’ll just have to live with the disappointment. There’s no one left outside this launch bay.’ 
	As the amber emergency lighting continued to dim and cast ever-feebler shadows in the massive hangar, the young man realised that the commissar was right. Despite his lowly posting and rumoured fall from grace, Eutychus had to respect the fact that Abdiel was still the Word of the Emperor on the Merciless Fist, even though he was a spiteful, desiccated old bastard. And with Captain Barrabas missing, that put him, Alameth Eutychus, in charge of the evacuation. All the saviour pods had been deployed when the cruiser had been crippled in battle with eldar pirates, reducing her to the shattered state that this salvage force had inherited. This rapidly disintegrating launch deck was their only way off the ship. Clearing his throat, he shouted over to the portly form of Armsman Haddar, who was staring intently at the vaulted roof above. 
	‘How many Valkyries are serviceable, Haddar?’
	The squat, once-muscular man snapped his gaze away, his jowly face wobbling with the sudden movement. 
	‘Well lad–’ The armsman caught his mistake as he saw Abdiel’s fist tightening on his chainsword hilt.
	‘Apologies,sub-lieutenant. Five serviceable, but we’ve only got four pilots, including yourself.’ He paused and blinked. ‘That won’t get all of us out of here.’ 
	‘How many is “all”?’ spat Abdiel.
	‘Forty-four, commissar. Not including the infantry.’
	Eutychus swallowed hard. Forty-four out of an original compliment of four thousand, and that was a skeleton crew for a vessel this size. He had to make a decision or Abdiel would take charge. Ship-wide vox was out and he could only hope the captain was on his way from the astropath’s chamber, but that would take at least twenty minutes. By his reckoning, they had five at the most. He could see the furthest Valkyrie powering up with a roar, its twin exhausts creating a furious brilliance behind it. 
	‘Get those troops onto that ship. The separator bulkheads have gone, so we’ll have to launch together. Tell–’ 
	A chest-thumping bang pounded through the air and the deck dropped, sending men sprawling and Valkyries sliding with a painful squeal towards the sealed launch doors. Eutychus was up first, and made the mistake of attempting to help Abdiel to his feet. Even in the fading light he could see the telltale stretched skin from a dozen basic juvenat treatments on the sinewy neck, a vein throbbing with fury as the old man’s coal-dark eyes burned into his.
	‘Save your help – and your prayers – for your absent captain,’ growled the commissar.
	Nothing less than a catastrophe would compel Jahath Barrabas to set foot inside an astropathic sanctum, but the current situation fitted that description perfectly. The first space hulk had appeared out of warp with no warning, its random jagged mass instantly annihilating three of the five cruisers in this Emperor-forsaken salvage fleet. The second hulk just missed them, but Barrabas knew the capricious and cruel nature of the warp and there might well be more on the way. Eutychus could organise the evacuation; Barrabas needed to get an emergency message out. For that, he had to endure this dank, stinking cavern and its babbling occupant. 
	The sinewy hands of Astropath Transcendent Sharah gripped the arms of his elaborately carved wooden throne, his sunken eye sockets eerily lit by the hundred burning incense orbs surrounding his wizened form. Huge metal support beams arced upwards in the domed interior, reminding Barrabas of a starving man’s ribcage, mirroring the psyker’s emaciated carcass. Blood began to run from Sharah’s cadaverous nose, a scarlet line on parchment skin staining his filthy green cloak.
	‘Clouds darken folding in blackness. Deep. Too deep. Salvage convoy two-three-ten reports three cruisers destroyed. The Genocide and the Merciless Fist survive. My soul is bound to His. No clarity to send. Repeat. Attempt.’ 
	Barrabas had seen astropaths get twitchy before, and while he didn’t pretend to understand the workings of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, he knew enough about the massive upheaval caused by sudden translation from the warp to know it was the source of his confusion and agony. Sharah had cast his voice into the void and Barrabas was just wasting his time now. As he turned to go, the ghastly creature’s voice dropped an octave.
	‘The Emperor’s tears wash our sins. The weight of House Barrabas is mighty, captain of the lost. Living in His shadow. Crawl into the Emperor’s light. Into the light.’ 
	Barrabas was mesmerised. Sharah was talking about him, his family, his shame. The contorted skeleton of a face turned and spoke in a barely audible whisper, its body unmoving in the massive wooden chair. 
	‘My darkness gathers. The maelstrom awaits. Habitable planet in range. Arboreal. Barrabas… wait. Something stirs in the scarlet dawn.’ 
	Shadows danced from the glowing braziers as the deck began to vibrate, many shaking themselves free of their rusting chains and crashing to the floor in a bloom of fire. The throne shook violently on its dais, yanking the astropath’s heavy hood loose. Grasping desperately at his skull, the psyker doubled over and vomited blood onto the floor. The Merciless Fist pitched to starboard as if swatted by a giant hand, throwing Barrabas towards the disgusting, screaming creature. 
	Barrabas retreated over the raised deck plates as the spasming Sharah clawed wildly at his face, blood pouring from his nostrils and eye sockets. He’d never seen the like and felt in his gut that it was the prelude to something truly horrific. 
	He was right. 
	The astropath’s head exploded, spattering slippery gore over the captain’s filthy uniform. Fragments of bone lanced into Barrabas’s stubble and he wiped them away as he stumbled into the corridor. The scene of carnage that met him took his breath away. The Merciless Fist was mortally wounded, the shriek and scream of men and metal from a dozen decks uniting ship and crew in their death throes. Another space hulk had appeared, not close to the ship, but inside it – structural integrity was collapsing on both of the parted sides, pressure bulkheads and blast doors vainly trying to slow its inevitable end. Miraculously, the space hulk’s randomly shaped protrusions provided a fast, precarious short cut straight down to the launch decks. Barrabas lost no time in clambering onto its shuddering surface, praying to the Emperor that the Merciless Fist wasn’t torn asunder before he reached his goal. 
	Eutychus squirmed inside the open cockpit of the battered Valkyrie, readying it for take-off. Three fully loaded, and equally decrepit, attack craft waited for his signal. Out on the deck behind, Abdiel gravely murmured the commissar’s benediction to the nine crewmembers who were staying behind. He was shadowed by the stocky form of First Mate Barat, the closest thing to an ally the commissar had. The crewmen crouched and prayed in near-darkness, gripping metal aquilas on filthy neck lanyards or loose in their bloodied hands, accepting their fate as the Emperor’s will. His duty over, Abdiel turned to leave, but was blown off his feet by a massive explosion in the hangar’s rear wall. A ragged tear of light and heat exposed the deck’s vast central corridor. Staggering to his feet, the old man squinted at what he saw and muttered a curse. Barat shook his shaven head in disbelief.
	The smouldering form of Barrabas gesticulated towards the fifth Valkyrie’s open hold as he ran for it, ignoring them both. 
	‘Come on lads, no time to sit around. Let’s get off this wreck.’ 
	Scrambling to their feet, the once-condemned men threw themselves at the drop-ship’s underbelly. Barrabas felt his way into the open cockpit of the Valkyrie pilot’s seat, detached his sword and dropped it to one side. Pulling on his helmet, he met Eutychus’s open-mouthed stare through the filthy glacis canopy with a thumbs up. He reached for the closing handle, but Abdiel’s gnarled hand stopped his downward tug and the commissar climbed into the co-pilot’s seat behind him. 
	‘Glad you could join us, commissar,’ he muttered. Abdiel merely growled in response.
	Powering up the engines, Barrabas initiated an emergency depressurisation of the bay and immediately realised his mistake. The weakened inner frame buckled and the cavernous interior’s roof creased downwards, flattening the outmost Valkyrie, pressing it into the bay floor. The massive launch doors ground open with painful slowness, sucking the inferno from behind them into space along with countless spinning bodies. With just a hair’s-breadth clearance, the four remaining Valkyries roared into the void as the Merciless Fist was torn apart. 
	‘I have to hand it to your family, Barrabas, when you destroy a vessel of the Imperial Navy, you are very thorough.’ Abdiel wrung out every drop of sarcasm from the venomous jibe, but Barrabas was too busy navigating the massive chunks of twisted metal spinning and wheeling around them. Flicking from internal to ship-to-ship vox, Barrabas calmly spoke into the headset.
	‘Single file behind me. Eutychus at the rear. Lock onto my approach vector.’ 
	Jahath Barrabas was a brilliant flyer, one of the main reasons he’d been allowed to join the Imperial Navy despite his family history. Had he stayed a pilot, things might have worked out significantly better but, in his younger days, Barrabas had been determined to prove he wasn’t cut from the same genetic cloth as his disgraced grandfather, whose actions as a Naval captain had led to the destruction of an Emperor-class battleship and most of its complement. Unfortunately for him, one of the few survivors was the man directly behind him. Because Abdiel hadn’t immediately countermanded his grandfather’s disastrous orders and executed him, the Commissariat had found him guilty of gross negligence. Little wonder he had held a grudge for all these years.
	A blossom of flame caught Barrabas’s eye and he instinctively took evasive manoeuvres. With every muscle tensed, he shrank into the pilot’s seat as the engines of the Merciless Fist’s amputated aft section roared overhead, a rainbow arc of fire pushing debris away behind them. Instantly changing course, he headed for the torn-off stern, to Abdiel’s alarm. 
	‘What in the Emperor’s name are you doing? We’ll be incinerated!’
	Barrabas gritted his teeth and hit the thrusters, ducking and weaving through the shower of debris. Smaller pieces thumped into the nose plating and leading edges of the wings. It was only a matter of time before a chunk went straight through one of the engines, so the perfectly clear pathway created by the dying cruiser’s engines was their best – their only – way out of the maelstrom. Barrabas saw a tide of wreckage smash into the Genocide’s port side, gas erupting from several burning fractures. No ships left its bays. 
	He looked back to a sea of frozen bodies appearing as if from nowhere. They careened off the nose and hull, like rag dolls thrown by an angry child. Grief at the loss of his crew and command would have to wait. Grimly, he ploughed straight through them.
	Curving upwards, the line of Valkyries banked as one and skirted the rapidly fading tip of the Merciless Fist’s dismembered exhausts before turning hard to starboard, using the wreck’s wake as a passage into open space. 
	‘Captain, I’m venting air from–’ 
	Barrabas and Abdiel grimaced at the shouting sub-lieutenant.
	‘Calm down, Eutychus. We all are. These crates are barely fit for atmospheric flight, let alone any extended time in space. Reduce the oxygen supply by twenty per cent to the hold and use your rebreathers. If there aren’t enough, then they’ll have to share. Get scanning for a habitable landing zone.
	A third voice crackled into their headsets, the low tones of Tug Pilot Zebah. Barrabas was glad to hear his voice. Zebah had been with him since the beginning of his illustrious career as a salvage captain. He trusted him with his life. Like the majority of the senior crew he’d carefully assembled over the years, Zebah would joke that they lived on their bellies, crawling from one battered wreck to the next, but their gallows humour and dishevelled appearance didn’t stop them yearning for the glory of battle and a chance to prove themselves to the Emperor – despite what Abdiel thought.
	‘Sir, I’ve detected a possible landing zone. It’s close.’ 
	Barrabas could feel the commissar’s eyes burning into the back of his head. He allowed himself a sigh of relief.
	‘Take us in, Zebah. I’ll lead upon planetfall. Activate the automated distress beacon with the coordinates. There may be survivors from the fleet able to rescue us.’ The lack of response in his headset was telling.
	Alternating the vox-switch, he spoke to his passengers.
	‘It’s going to be an uncomfortable ride, gentlemen. Prep any weapons or equipment you can find. We’re going to need them.’
	Despite having no real idea where they were going, Barrabas knew that it was infinitely better than where they had been and at least offered some feeble ray of hope.
	The howl of wind and turbines combined to pummel Barrabas’s hearing as the Valkyrie plummeted across the blood-red sky of the planet. His hands were numb and his knuckles burned with pain as he gripped the violently shaking control stick between his tensed legs. As they descended, Barrabas cast about for a suitable landing spot between breaks in the low, wispy cloud, but the surface was a maze of differing levels, some little more than corridors of black soil on top of crumbling stone projections, forming gaps too narrow for the unpredictably responding drop-ship to navigate. Finally, a wide, open plateau came into view and, while there were ranges of raised columns in the distance and elevated embankments on either side, it looked like their best bet.
	‘All ships, try to remember as much of the geography as you can.’ 
	Easing the nose down, the ship dropped sharply to the right as the starboard engine exploded. Alarms wailed and warning runes flashed, but he didn’t need any reminding of his situation. The drop-ship fell into a shuddering dive and he levelled off just in time for the underside of the Valkyrie to plane away beneath his feet and a small boulder make short work of the port wingtip. As the nose dug a furrow into the ground he tried to compensate with the single engine but the Valkyrie rammed headfirst into a raised bed of rust-coloured rock, pitching him upside down. His sword fell onto the roof of the canopy and, absurdly, he feared he might become the first ever captain to be decapitated in such a way. Abruptly the ship stopped and, once the soil-muffled whine of the dying engine had subsided, there was dark silence.
	Barrabas heard voices, rattling and hammering, and was suddenly aware it was brighter behind his closed eyes and colder around his ringing ears. Eager hands clawed at the straps holding his body into the seat, and he dropped with a thump. Then he was on his back, looking up at broiling sepia clouds and the bloody, frowning faces of Armsman Toah and First Mate Barat. They were dressed in infantry fatigues salvaged from the hold and had a variety of small arms dangling from hastily-attached webbing. 
	‘Report,’ he croaked.
	‘We’re all alive, captain, although Mortok’s broken his arm. Narris and Lubek are working on a short-range transmitter they found, and the others are gathering up ammo from the hold.’ Barat wiped blood from a gash in his sweating head as he spoke, while the reedy form of Toah helped Barrabas to his feet. 
	Straightening his tunic as best he could, Barrabas clenched his fists to coax sensation back into his shaking fingers and retrieved the dirt-covered sword at his feet. His next question was drowned by the shriek of three Valkyries, in far better shape than his, which touched down forwards and to the left of the rocky plinth on which they stood, skilfully avoiding the raised ridges that flanked their position. 
	‘Get the commissar out,’ said Barrabas. 
	Barat jumped to the order, carefully unbuckling Abdiel’s unconscious dangling form.
	‘Lend a hand here, Toah!’ Barat was a powerful man, but couldn’t manage to safely detach Abdiel on his own. Toah’s eyes flicked to meet Barrabas’s frown, and the captain shook his head softly. With a shadow of a smile, Toah sloped over to help his misguided colleague.
	‘Respect the uniform, not the man,’ grunted the larger man. 
	Toah had heard this from Barat before. It didn’t wash one bit with him or any of the crew, but his forthright response was drowned out by a loud, wet sucking sound. Barrabas wheeled towards the noise, his head spinning from the rapid movement and it took a few seconds to work out what was happening in the scarlet light. Two of the drop-ships had begun to sink, not the normal settlement of landing pads onto soft ground but a rapid, uneven descent that signalled real danger.
	‘Open the gunship holds! Now!’ 
	The heavy rear doors dropped, their leading edges immediately disappearing under the mire with a splat. Twenty men spilled out with a variety of weapons and uniforms grabbed from their respective ships, their enthusiasm on release soon tempered by the danger in which they found themselves. Still airborne, Eutychus saw the problem and pulled up steeply on emergency thrust, forcing the stricken Valkyries down faster than before in his wash. Aft-heavy, their noses rose into the air as men struggled through the quicksand, hauled out by their crewmates who had found the nearest safe footholds. Barrabas blinked away a single flickering shadow that passed to his left, blaming it on the concussion that sang between his ears.
	Eutychus landed his Valkyrie on a flat expanse of rock and was out of the cockpit within seconds, hopping between boulders and natural platforms towards his captain’s inverted gunship. Barrabas ran towards the assembled crew as the stricken Valkyries slid downwards, both pilots now balancing precariously on the up-ended noses of their ships, and shouted at Zebah who was closest.
	‘Jump. We’ll pull you out as soon as you get in.’ 
	A panting Eutychus skidded to a halt besides Barrabas, while a dazed Abdiel made his unsteady way towards them. 
	‘They could get sucked right under if they jump from that height,’ said the young man. Barrabas nodded, clearing grit from his collar with a couple of fingers. 
	‘If they don’t go now, they could get pulled down with their ships. Come on!’ 
	Again, Barrabas saw a fleeting shadow at his feet, bigger this time. He looked to the sky but saw nothing. The two overall-clad men exchanged a glance and then, with a thumbs up, leapt into the innocent-looking black soil below. Landing with a plop, they were as relieved as Barrabas that their rate of descent was surprisingly slow, and carefully waded outwards. Shouts of encouragement from the crew gave them heart, and Barrabas breathed a sigh of relief just as several flickering shadows flashed overhead. Eutychus saw them too, his head snapping upwards into the bright red sky. 
	‘Captain–’
	At first, Barrabas couldn’t process what he’d seen; such was the speed of it. Flashes of grey and white, outstretched leathery wings with glistening edges, the glint of curved, exposed talons craning forwards in a lethal reach. Then there were screams. Again he shook his head, battling the buzzing hive between his ears, but Eutychus was already unholstering his laspistol and taking aim as Abdiel screamed at the stunned crewmen assembled nearby. 
	‘Don’t just stand there. In the name of the Emperor, kill them!’
	Jolted into action, the thirty-nine men frantically grabbed for small arms and lasguns, a jumbled mass of confusion and poor weapons practice. Barrabas pulled his laspistol free, firing into the wheeling mass of creatures descending upon the desperately waving forms of the two pilots. Working as a lethal flock, the huge reptilian beasts flew in a tight circle around the men, a whirlwind of slashing razor-edged wings and dagger-sharp talons, until the men’s features became an unrecognisable mess of blood. An arm disappeared in a gushing instant, taken up high by one creature which, away from the group, presented a more focused target and Abdiel blasted repeatedly at its sinewy form. Surprisingly agile for its size, it ducked, turned and weaved, avoiding the fire and refusing to drop the gruesome trophy from its long, bony beak. 
	The screaming abruptly stopped and despite the hail of fire now hitting the flashing bodies, only two creatures fell into the swampy ground, immediately diced and devoured by their merciless kin. The pilots were now bloody stumps, cut and sliced apart piece by piece, but at least their misery was over. Some of the larger creatures swooped low over the wildly firing crew, veering off at the last second from their attack. Barrabas was horrified to see a further dark cloud of them approaching. 
	The ground shook.
	Barrabas, Eutychus and Abdiel lost their footing and fell heavily onto the polished rock, immediately scrambling to their feet in fear of an attack from the flying nightmares. Instead, they were surprised to see the flock hurtle upward towards the distant explosion that now rolled across the skies and had surely caused the ground to quake. Their burst of speed created a foetid breeze behind them, leaving nothing more than a stream of lazily-popping air bubbles on the marshy surface and Zebah’s partially stripped leg still in its work boot. Not a fitting end for such a man, thought Barrabas, as he turned to the panting form of Armsman Haddar.
	‘Get up that ridge and see what’s going on. Might be someone else made it out of the convoy. The rest of you, inventory what we have. Keep to the rock.’
	Barrabas wiped the grime from his face and took a deep breath. It was cold and getting dark. Shelter would be needed, and soon. Abdiel threw him a filthy look, clearly blaming him for the situation they were currently in. Barrabas didn’t turn away from the old man’s gaze, even when the commissar slammed home a new power pack and cocked his weapon deliberately towards him.
	Haddar shouted down from the raised embankment to his left. ‘Captain, there’s a big chunk of space hulk about fifteen kilometres away. Too far to make out details, but it looks like those… banshees are circling it.’ 
	Eutychus turned to Barrabas, his face uncharacteristically serious. 
	‘Orks?’ 
	‘Very likely. We need to get out of here.’ 
	Barrabas peered into the distance through shattered magnoculars, down the wide trench in which they stood towards the towering needle-like columns darkening slowly in the distant sunset. He could just make out two of the creatures wheeling lazily between the spires and it suddenly became obvious to him they knew where their prey might get trapped – a fact they could use to their advantage. 
	‘We need to know what we’re up against, sir.’ 
	Eutychus was thinking like an officer. This pleased Barrabas. 
	‘Agreed. Take two armsmen and scout the situation, sub-lieutenant. We’ll make our way over to the base of those towers. There are some caves at ground level.’
	Eutychus saluted automatically and strode over to the assembled men, catching a lasrifle with a clatter from the stocky form of Haddar as he approached. With a nod, Toah swiftly fell in behind Eutychus, exchanging a grim smile with Haddar as they marched towards the embankment – they were they boy’s first command, but as it clearly didn’t bother the youth, it didn’t worry them unduly. Barrabas shouted after the trio as they clambered up the rocky slope. ‘Be careful where you step. Look to the skies. If those creatures fly at night, they’ll show you where to avoid.’ 
	Within seconds the men were at the top of the incline and, after a short pause and much pointing, disappeared out of sight into the dark red gloom descending over the planet’s surface. Abdiel strolled over to Barrabas’s side, his face a shadow under his cap.
	‘What kind of “captain” are you, Barrabas? What kind of role model for a young officer? He’s a good prospect. A little too well-mannered perhaps, but with the right training he might make an officer. Look at you ¬– you’re a disgrace, like your grandfather. He follows your example at his peril.’
	Barrabas spoke as calmly as his hoarse throat would allow, knowing this infuriated the man beyond measure.
	‘You’ve been riding my back for the last three years, Abdiel. We both know why I’m here, but what about you? What did you do wrong?’ 
	The belt at the bottom of Abdiel’s polished breastplate creaked as he leaned menacingly towards Barrabas who, being a good ten centimetres taller than him, didn’t retreat one inch, even at the whiff of the commissar’s stinking breath. 
	‘The only mistake I made was to give undisciplined, wayward scum like your grandfather the benefit of the doubt. I don’t intend to repeat that error. Ever.’ 
	Eutychus pressed his back against a rock, its dampness soaking into his tunic. To his left, Haddar pulled a battered lasgun to his barrel chest, darting glances all around in the russet darkness. To his right, the ends of Toah’s boots tapped nervously against each other as they dangled downwards at head-height. ‘What can you see?’ hissed Eutychus through cold-clenched teeth. 
	‘Orks, sir. Thousands of ‘em.’ Toah lay flattened to the ground on the plateau above and behind Eutychus and Haddar, surveying the scene as best he could with his salvaged lascannon scope. 
	Eutychus frowned. It was likely that the orks were also survivors of the collision with the fleet, and the proximity to their own crash site couldn’t be coincidence. 
	‘What are they up to, Toah?’
	‘Bloody rocks could be hiding anything, sir. They’re trying to assemble vehicles for scouting parties, but they keep sinking under their own weight. Looks like the banshees have gone, but–’
	Toah was silenced by a huge throwing axe that cleaved his skull. Wrenching it free with a sickening wet crack, the owner of the clumsy weapon turned to face Eutychus, grunting as Toah’s feet twitched wildly, his body not yet realising that his brain had been bisected. Within seconds the hulking figure was attacking; a raging shadow of muscle and sinew seamlessly connected to the enormous cannon now bearing on its target. The darkness burst into stroboscopic brilliance from Haddar’s weapon as he emptied an entire power pack into the bellowing ork’s head with absolute precision, the cover of night only returning when the greenskin collapsed onto its back. 
	Eutychus had heard the crew joke about Haddar’s self-proclaimed prowess in battle as the ramblings of a middle-aged, deluded man. What he had just witnessed would have stopped them laughing. Breathing heavily, the armsman looked sharply at the gaping officer. 
	‘There’ll be more, lad. Time to go.’
	Eutychus forced himself away from the hard comfort of the wall and headed back the way they came, the ground soft and sucking on his saturated boots. The jangling of equipment and the men’s panting breath was soon joined by another sound, that of shrieking and whooping directly behind. 
	‘Into the shadows, Haddar. We might lose them.’
	It was optimistic of Eutychus to think that they could successfully retrace their steps in the dull gloom that passed for night on this Emperor-forsaken planet, and within minutes he had absolutely no idea where they were in relation to the crashed hulk or his own crew. Rocks loomed claustrophobically around them, and things took yet another turn for the worst when the ground changed from a sucking mud to a wetter, softer consistency which grabbed at the sub-lieutenant’s legs and pitched him forwards. 
	‘Watch out Haddar, the ground’s–’ Eutychus’s words were drowned out in a volley of echoing fire from behind and he felt the whistle of projectiles pass his ears. Haddar’s return shots were rewarded with shrieks of pain from the darkness, but this only added to Eutychus’s frustration. He couldn’t turn enough to give any kind of supporting fire, and he knew the armsman was a sitting duck as long as he blocked the orks’ path in this slender corridor. Finally hitting solid ground, he spun and threw himself back-first onto the rock, levelling the lasgun towards Haddar. The passage was too narrow. He still couldn’t fire past or over the portly man without fear of hitting him. Then the armsman’s power pack was exhausted. Seizing the moment, the orks thundered forwards as he stood his ground.
	‘Haddar! Get down!’
	There was no answer. Tossing his lasgun aside, Haddar calmly reached into the pockets of his webbing and pulled out a pair of frag grenades. As the whooping greenskins smashed into him, Eutychus was thrown back a full five metres by the double explosion’s shockwave. Smoke rose into the air and the smell of singed flesh caught in the back of his throat as, seriously winded, he fought for breath. With no obvious signs of movement from the, now thankfully hidden, carnage, Eutychus wiped an angry tear from his eye and staggered off into the darkness, utterly distraught at failing his first real test as an officer.
	Barrabas sat wearily at the mouth of a shallow cave and took a swig from his water bottle, watching the brown-red sunrise with concern. Their location was hardly a perfect defensive position, but the eroded cliff-face had offered some shelter and, with a deep natural passageway behind, a potential escape route. The order to rest had been issued barely four hours before, but the low murmurs from his crew confirmed their state of exhaustion.
	Engineers Narris and Lubek, who had busied themselves with the salvaged transmitter to his left, hadn’t stopped since they made camp. Occasional bursts of static punctuated the air, quickly followed by the urgent muttering of invocations and supplications from the two veteran technicians in their attempt to appease and coerce the transmitter’s machine-spirit. Shifting uncomfortably on his rocky seat, Barrabas still wasn’t happy about the distance they’d put between themselves and the greenskin crash site. He could only hope the dumb rage of the orks would drop them straight into the shifting patches they’d managed to avoid. It might buy a little time, but sooner or later they would catch up. As long as it wasn’t here, they might stand a chance. 
	‘Your crew, such as they are, seem to think they owe you something for stranding them here.’ Abdiel appeared at Barrabas’s side without a sound. ‘Personally, I don’t see it that way.’ The commissar stared straight ahead into the gloomy valley from which they had come, eyes fixed on an unseen point.
	‘While we’re alive, we still have a chance.’ Barrabas wasn’t convinced by his own words, but he wasn’t going to let Abdiel ignore the fact that he owed him his life.
	‘Marooning us with no chance of rescue on a planet teeming with orks isn’t something to be applauded, Barrabas. You seem to forget I’ve been through this before with your family – giving them a chance, only to see destruction and ruin. My ruin.’ 
	It might have been the deep, numbing fatigue or the last vestiges of concussion, but Barrabas didn’t react to the sound of Abdiel’s bolt pistol being drawn. He found himself looking into its charred muzzle and, behind, the commissar staring impassively at him.
	‘I’m taking command. In the name of the Emperor, you’re relieved of–’ 
	Both men jumped at the blaze of noise from the nearby transmitter. Luckily for Barrabas, the commissar’s finger was light on the trigger.
	‘Automatic repeat. Attention all survivors of salvage convoy two-three-ten. This is Captain Rale of the Genocide. We are aware of your situation and will dispatch rescue vessels on completion of repairs to our starboard airlocks. Activate landing beacon if safe to do so. Time stamp zero-three-hundred-forty-two. Automatic repeat. Attention…’ 
	Rushing out of the cave at the sound of the amplified voice, the crew’s excitement quickly turned to astonishment as they beheld the commissar’s pistol levelled at their captain and saviour. Lubek turned the volume down and glanced at the squatting Narris, ten years his junior but in far worse physical shape, and the two joined the increasingly tense silence of their shipmates. 
	From the corner of his vision, First Mate Barat saw the shadow of a weapon being raised but thrust out his muscular arm and pushed the muzzle down, praying Abdiel hadn’t seen the move. The crewman glared at Barat, but the first mate met his stare unflinchingly; this had been coming for a long time. It would have to play out between captain and commissar with no intervention from the crew. 
	‘It appears that I just might have saved us after all, commissar.’ Barrabas spoke evenly, his eyes staring into the darkness beneath Abdiel’s peaked cap. 
	‘This doesn’t change a thing, Barrabas. There’s no telling when the Genocide will be able to launch rescue ships. If it’s more than a day, we’ll be done for anyway.’ 
	‘Make that half a day.’
	Weapons clattered in clumsy response to the new voice from the dark, but recognition quickly followed as Eutychus staggered up the steep incline to their position. Without turning his attention from Abdiel, Barrabas snapped his fingers and a water canteen was handed to the exhausted man, who drank from it with grateful, heavy gulps. 
	‘Where are your men, sub-lieutenant?’ Abdiel regarded the filthy, bedraggled officer with no hint of pity or welcome, his arm still locked and arrow-straight despite the weight of the pistol. 
	‘I… lost them, commissar.’ Eutychus looked down to his mud-encrusted chest, the blue of his tunic hardly visible in the meagre light. ‘Both of them.’
	‘Useless. Absolutely useless. You’re as feeble as your mentor.’
	Abdiel looked back down to the unflinching Barrabas and over to the wary group behind him. He’d felt hostility from the crew before, burning into the back of his neck, heating the wrinkled skin behind his high collar, but nothing on this scale. Commissars were supposed to stand for discipline and instil the will to serve, but he felt as if he were among the scum of a penal legion and any wrong move would be his last. Easing his finger off the trigger, he casually holstered his bolt pistol and turned his attention to the transmitter and the two squatting men frozen to the spot beside it. 
	‘See if you can get a vox-message back to Rale. Tell him to hurry.’ He nodded towards Eutychus. ‘That idiot’s probably led the greenskins right to us.’ Turning on his heel, he marched over to the crewmen.
	‘Our chances of survival will be maximised in a firefight with the greatest possible number of men. Your captain’s execution will hold – for now.’
	With that, Abdiel shoved his way roughly through the line of crewmen back towards his kit inside the cave, exchanging a brief nod with Barat as he passed. Barrabas could feel the anger and confusion mounting in his men and knew he had to act fast. Rising quickly, he strode over to the dejected figure of Eutychus, whose shoulders were slumped in defeat, and turned to face them all.
	‘Now listen to me. We can still get out of this.’ The men looked to each other, then back to Barrabas. ‘We’re still on our bellies, we’re still in shadow, but we have a chance to serve the God-Emperor and perhaps even survive in the process. One thing’s for sure – if we stay here, we will die. Eutychus?’ 
	The younger man’s head snapped up, shocked by the unusually sharp tone in his captain’s voice. ‘Yes, sir?’
	‘How long do you think we have?’
	Eutychus rubbed his chin, Toah’s blood flaking away from his still-smooth face. ‘Eight hours, perhaps less. They couldn’t get any of their vehicles out of the swamp around them so they’ll be on foot. If anyone survived Haddar’s last stand, they could be even–’
	The explosion was ear-splitting. Rock showered onto the ground from the smoking hole created by the ork mortar round above their heads and a distant muzzle flash attracted everyone’s eye. Despite the greenskins’ poor marksmanship, they would hit someone or something given enough time and shells, a belief clearly shared by the wheeling flock of banshees that had appeared as if from nowhere.
	‘Move!’ screamed Barrabas, and they scattered back into the safety of the cave as the soft, black ground erupted at the base of the slope before them. The greenskins had over-corrected the trajectory and, mercifully, the shell fell short. Inside the cave, the men grabbed their gear and swiftly threw on packs, weapons and helmets, orchestrated by a furious Abdiel who pushed most of them out towards the escape route at the rear of the cavern. 
	Taking up the tail-end of the ragged line, alongside Barat, he ran towards the figure of Barrabas who stood to the side of a wide fissure in a sheer rock wall. The first of the men disappeared into the corridor as, far above, the banshees suddenly dropped. They fell short of descending onto the moving feast below. Instead, their wingtips loosened spikes of rock at the top of the canyon’s walls, spilling debris down upon the fleeing crew.
	The ground erupted with a roar, throwing soil and stones in a filthy hail. Abdiel looked behind him and saw Barat lying on his side, one hand spasmodically clutching the air. Despite the obvious danger from another lucky shell, the commissar ran back to the mortally-wounded man, the side of his chest oozing life from a protruding dagger of shrapnel. 
	‘Commissar… leave me. They’re right behind us. You have to…’ Barat gritted his teeth, overwhelmed with pain. Abdiel looked down at the man with pity and fury. But Barat’s eyes were focused on the rocks raining down into the chasm and, with a sudden burst of adrenaline-fuelled strength, he grabbed Abdiel’s overcoat. 
	‘Get me… to the passageway, sir… I can stop… the greenskins.’ Barrabas was shouting, gesticulating wildly into a crack in the rock face, but his words were drowned out by a shrieking whistle. A smouldering mortar round thumped into the ground a few metres away, its battered shaft fizzing and sputtering menacingly. Despite his frailness, Abdiel hauled the wheezing first mate to his feet, ignoring the blood fountaining from the gaping hole in Barat’s side. With painful slowness, they approached an incredulous Barrabas as a live round exploded in the distance.
	‘We can’t take him with us, Abdiel. He’ll–’
	‘I’m not… going anywhere, captain.’ 
	Barrabas blinked, then nodded. Turning on his heel, he shielded his head from the increasingly heavy rain of dust and small stones as Abdiel laid the man gently into a sitting position, his legs nearly touching the other side of the slender corridor. The creatures could be seen in the narrow crack of light high above. They had spotted their next meal and were whipping themselves into a frenzy. A boulder bounced between the sides of the chasm, pounding dust and chunks out of either side as it crashed its way down.
	‘For the Emperor, commissar.’
	‘For the Emperor, First Mate Barat.’
	Abdiel ducked under the wedged lump of stone while Barat shielded his eyes from the dust and grit showering down on him. Behind him, another shell exploded and he could hear the thud of ork movement. The banshees needed a little more encouragement to carry out the first mate’s suicidal plan, so he wiped his hands into the warm, wet blood leaking from his body, feebly pushed out his hands and screamed skywards. 
	‘Come and get it!’ 
	This was too much for the banshees, who swooped down, heedless of the danger, towards the easy pickings below. Their wings beat against the crumbling walls, opening up ancient fissures and bringing down tonnes of rock, burying Barat and catching many of their brethren in a maelstrom of stone. The passageway was blocked, and all that the furious orks could do was bellow impotently at the now-impassable corridor.
	Two hours later, Barrabas’s men lay panting and exhausted on a rocky outcrop, dried mud caking their uniforms. Commissar Abdiel stared grimly into space, clearly upset at the loss of Barat, but unwilling – or unable – to discuss it with anybody. Sitting heavily next to Barrabas, Eutychus took off his cap, swigged from his canteen and wiped the back of his mouth with a filthy hand. ‘Captain, the men are in pretty bad shape. This seems like a good enough place to defend. What do you think?’ Eutychus still carried the loss of Haddar and Toah on his young shoulders, but Barrabas was pleased that the sub-lieutenant still had the condition of his men at the top of his agenda
	‘We need open ground. Barat bought us some precious time, but if the orks get onto those ridges above us, they’ll flank us and we’ll be slaughtered. According to Abdiel, this valley flattens out a couple of miles ahead.’ Eutychus turned to look in the direction of the bloated red sun, shielding his eyes against the scarlet light despite the gathering clouds. 
	‘There are a lot of banshees over there, sir. Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ 
	‘They’ve already done us one favour. Besides, it’s the best chance we’ve got for our landing beacon signal to be picked up. Ready the men. Our retreat’s nearly over. After this, we make a stand – and you get revenge.’ Eutychus nodded grimly. He’d aged a decade in a day. 
	Reaching the end of the plateau, Barrabas and Eutychus halted the men and they surveyed the change in scenery. Eutychus gulped. Abdiel snorted derisively. Barrabas looked skywards.
	The ground stretched to the horizon on the left and right, sloping gently downwards in front of them to a ragged edge and a sheer drop to the floor below. Directly ahead was a narrow natural bridge leading to a wider soil-covered platform that angled upwards, terminating in a flat rocky ledge. It was a complete dead end, with no escape save for the fatal plunge surrounding it. Dozens of banshees circled high in the sky over the bridge, with new ones joining them every other second. Something was very, very wrong here but Barrabas smiled at the brilliant shaft of light breaking through the clouds like a scarlet spotlight, throwing the surface of the rocky projection into shining relief. 
	What had the astropath said? ‘Crawl into the Emperor’s light. Into the light.’ 
	‘That’s where we make our stand.’ 
	Eutychus stared at Barrabas and a soft gasp of disbelief hissed from the men assembled behind. 
	‘Captain… it’s a dead end. And the banshees–’ 
	Barrabas didn’t shift his gaze from the view ahead. He spoke with a calm assuredness that cut Eutychus off without a hint of chastisement.
	‘Look closely. The creatures are very high. They’re waiting for something, and I think I know what it is. Get over the bridge, spread out, and keep to the edges as best you can. The rock at the back of that platform is perfect for a rescue ship to land on. The slope will help us fortify our position. We’re going to make a redoubt.’ 
	Abdiel barked a laugh. ‘What is this? Some exercise in ancient military tactics? This is suicide, Barrabas, and you know it.’
	Barrabas turned to Abdiel. He was beyond exhaustion and past caring.
	‘Commissar, there’s no other ground around here that will support the weight of a drop-ship unless you want to spend precious hours reconnoitring the area, which means splitting our forces. We can’t stay here because it’s too exposed. Over there, we have the advantage of height and focus of fire. It’s also perfect for a homing beacon. We’ll be out of range of their small arms from this side and we’ve seen how good their artillery skills are.’
	Abdiel looked at him sharply.
	‘You know what I mean. Barat was killed by a lucky shot, nothing more. Besides, orks will do anything to kill us up close and to do that, they have to come across that bridge.’
	The crew silently regarded the island of rock in front of them and the thickening blur of banshees whirling above. With a renewed self-belief, Barrabas turned to face the remains of his crew.
	‘It’s time to get off our bellies, men. Look in front of you. For once we’ll be raised up, elevated above the dirt and filth, so we can stand like men in the light of the Emperor and take strength from it. The rescue ship could be on its way right now. All we have to do is hold out for as long as we can. What say you?’
	The roar of ‘Aye!’ was immediate and shouted with passion. Their long-desired chance to fight and serve had come. This was their battle, their chance for glory. They’d seen the ways this planet and its creatures could take their lives, and had survived. They would die fighting, for the Emperor, for their captain and for themselves. 
	As Barrabas led the men down towards the bridge, Abdiel took up the rear and watched them carefully traverse the precarious channel. Despite his objections, Barrabas’s logic was sound and there was no denying that he’d energised his exhausted men as well as any commissar. 
	It seemed he might be different to his predecessors after all.
	Three hours later, Barrabas stood on the broad rocky ledge at the rear of the platform, looking down at the thirty-five survivors digging and patting with their field spades below. Several hundred pairs of banshee eyes also watched from their unrivalled vantage point high above, having retreated swiftly upon realising there would be no easy pickings from the men crossing the bridge, even in the softest ground at its centre. 
	The steps of the redoubt had shaped up quickly and would allow three rows of twelve men, each elevated behind the next, to concentrate fire on the same spot. To the left, a grime-covered Abdiel threw down his implement, wiped his brow and nodded in satisfaction at what they’d achieved, unaware Barrabas was watching with a rueful smile. Coming from the commissar, that was almost a compliment. Both men looked over at the shout from Eutychus – the orks were in sight, hammering down the canyon. 
	‘Throw everything you don’t need over the side. Narris, activate the landing beacon. Lubek, protect the transmitter as best you can. The rest of you, check and clean your weapons. Form ranks when ready.’ 
	The crew moved as one, stripping down to the bare minimum – weapons, ammunition, what body armour they’d salvaged from the Valkyries. Within twenty minutes, the orks stood at the ridge opposite, assessing the situation. Their stench drifted on the air, along with guttural laughter.
	‘How many do you think, captain?’ Eutychus’s voice was level, without fear.
	‘More than us.’
	It was obvious that the survivors had nothing like enough firepower to defeat the greenskins in open battle, but it should be adequate for his plan. He hoped.
	With a roar, the orks began their untidy dash towards the bridge, a ragged mass of hate-fuelled muscle, twenty lines deep. Shafts of red light caught their dull helmets and glinted off their keen axe blades, the thumping of a thousand boots shaking the ground beneath them. The men took their places, with Eutychus to the left of the front rank, Abdiel in the middle raised position and Barrabas at the top. 
	High above the bridge, the banshee formation tightened, with only a couple darting down to take a closer look when, victims of their own fury, some particularly clumsy orks plunged straight off the side of the opposing cliff, such was their rush to be the first into combat. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t stop the sea of howling, mindless greenskins pouring onto the narrow bridge, its underside a rough arch thickening at the connections to the plateau and the rocky pillar on which the survivors stood. Its thinnest point was at the middle, and this would be where the men would concentrate their fire.
	The orks slowed on hitting the marshy surface of the bridge, with some of them disappearing into the quagmire as they were steamrollered by their kin. Within seconds the bridge was a seething mass of bulging muscle and grinding armour, wild firing and roars of fury. It looked like a living entity, a writhing sea of chaotic movement. One of the crew caught a blast in the arm and spun with the impact, and the men began to move restlessly. 
	‘Steady, lads. Steady. Front rank, make ready. Look to the front, pick your targets, wait for the order.’ Barrabas’s voice was strong as Engineer Narris helped the injured crewman back to his place in the line. The orks were now queuing to get onto the bridge, pushing and shoving the dozens in front of them along, their grunts and cries a wall of sound resonating across the chasm. Sheer strength and bloody-mindedness drove them on towards their quarry, fuelled by the predictable rage Barrabas had counted on and would use against them.
	‘Front rank… fire!’ 
	A mix of lasguns and autoguns blasted in unison, hitting the lead orks with a lethal concentrated punch of beams and high velocity rounds. The beasts stumbled and looked down at the torn gashes in their bodies but the momentum of their fellows pushed them forwards still. 
	‘Middle ran, fire! Rear rank, fire!’ 
	Two more volleys hit the same targets in the same spot; this time tearing into them and sending some spiralling off the sides of the bridge. Infuriated, the orks behind howled and pushed even harder, straight into the intense fire. The narrowness of the footway meant there was no room to avoid fallen compatriots, and the clumsy brutes staggered and slipped over each other, pummelling the dead or injured into the soil below. 
	‘Front rank, fire! Middle rank, fire! Rear rank, fire!’ 
	The three rows fired within seconds of each other, giving their weapons enough time to cycle, stop from overheating, or for magazines and power packs to be exchanged, without a pause in the hail of focused destruction. One man in the front rank fell, then another in the middle, but the others kept their positions and maintained disciplined fire as the pile of bodies on the bridge began to mount. The few faster, luckier orks who made it onto the platform were picked off by Abdiel with carefully aimed bolt pistol fire. Up above, the banshees circled, watching the carnage unfolding below them, avoiding stray fire with great beats of their leathery wings. 
	The noise of human and ork weapons clattered deafeningly, but the first crack of the bridge cut through the din like a blade. Staying in line, Barrabas ducked to his left and saw rubble fall from the middle of its underside. He had hoped for this, but not the small group of infuriated orks currently rushing from the heaped dead at the bridge’s centre towards the front rank of defenders. 
	Abdiel’s pistol had jammed, and the orks would be on him in seconds. Eutychus saw the problem too, and both men ran forwards, weapons blazing at the approaching greenskins. Barrabas ignored the volleys of fire hurtling overhead as he joined Abdiel at the mouth of the bridge, the added peril only adding to his fury. The loss of his crew and his ship, and years of self-loathing, overwhelmed him now. Bathed in the planet’s crimson light, he let rage course through him. 
	An approaching ork took the brunt of his rage as he repeatedly shot it at point-blank range with his laspistol, venting his anger with a final kick to its bloody, gaping stomach, sending it spinning from the platform. That loss of control nearly cost him his life as one particularly stupid warrior seized the moment by leaping high into the air, intent on crushing the captain underfoot. His battle-cry turned from a shriek to a wet gurgle as a dozen lasguns neatly dissected his repulsive head from his thick body, spraying viscera over the other greenskins. 
	Recovering his balance and wits, Barrabas drew his sword and fought back-to-back with Abdiel against a couple of grunting orks while Eutychus helped from the side, blooding his officer’s blade for the first time.
	‘Suffer not the alien to live! Stand fast in the light of the Emperor’s glory!’
	Abdiel’s rage matched that of Barrabas and while three more men fell behind them on the redoubt, the withering fire continued. Good lads, thought Barrabas. Good lads. His reverie was cut short as a massive ork hand struck the side of his head, sending him reeling to the floor. He cursed himself for losing concentration once again and had it not been for the ground suddenly and violently shaking, he would have been stamped out of existence by the brute.
	Two thunderclap cracks boomed, and the trickle of rock from the bridge’s underside became a torrent. With a teeth-rattling crash it finally gave way under the weight of the orks, dead and alive. Fracturing at its weakest point, the whole of the bridge’s length fell away and a countless greenskin throats screamed as they hurtled to the earth below in a shower of rocks and dirt. A thrashing black smear of banshees followed them down, ready to gorge on the rich pickings at the bottom. 
	The surviving men on the redoubt gave a spirited cheer which, as Barrabas struggled with a huge green hand around his throat, he felt to be premature. Repeated thrusts into the greenskin’s belly with his sword, and Eutychus’s frenzied slashing at its back, soon loosened the greenskin’s grip and, with a moan, it crashed lifelessly to the ground. As Barrabas pulled his blade free of the greenskin’s massive form, the transmitter suddenly crackled into life on the raised ridge behind. 
	‘Attention all survivors of salvage convoy two-three-ten. This is Captain Rale of the Genocide. We have your position and will be with you in minutes. Stand by.’ 
	The air was torn by the scream of missiles overhead, pulping most of the remaining orks as they frantically assembled a variety of decrepit mortars to fire across the chasm. Near the ledge of the platform, Eutychus bent over in an attempt to catch his breath, retching at the stench of spilt alien innards while Abdiel stood panting behind him, smoking bolt pistol in one hand and gore-covered chainsword in the other. 
	‘Well, it seems you’ve claimed a famous victory here, Barrabas. Congratulations.’ 
	There was no malice in Abdiel’s voice, no sarcasm or insinuation as he calmly walked towards the exhausted captain and levelled the pistol between his eyes, faint wisps of smoke tracking behind the charred muzzle. Eutychus looked up at Abdiel from his bent position and shook his head disbelievingly. On the redoubt, the surviving men watched anxiously. 
	Without taking his eyes from the barrel of the bolt pistol, Barrabas wiped his blade on his trousers, sheathed it and threw his laspistol to the ground. 
	‘You’ve saved us all,’ continued the commissar. ‘But I must dispense the Emperor’s justice. It’s time for you to die.’ 
	Flicking his gaze to meet Abdiel’s, Barrabas shrugged. ‘Get on with it then.’
	Abdiel’s finger tightened on the trigger, but the grim smile on his face disappeared along with the ground beneath him. Barrabas caught a glimpse of total astonishment on the commissar’s face before a crashing rumble filled the air and the edge of the platform dropped away. Eutychus pitched over a fraction of a second later. Reaching out instinctively, Eutychus’s arms fell heavily onto the newly-exposed edge of the platform but, with nothing to grab on to, he began to slide. Throwing himself forwards, Barrabas clutched at both retreating hands and felt the sinews pop in the younger man’s wrists. Despite having a good grip, the sub-lieutenant seemed very heavy and Barrabas struggled with the weight. Behind him, the captain could hear the remaining crew running to help, but the whole forward section of the rock pillar was giving way now that its precarious support from the bridge had disappeared.
	‘Eutychus… Try to… pull yourself up if you can…’
	Eutychus’s eyes bulged with naked panic. ‘I’ve got… Abdiel hanging on to me… He’s trying to climb–’
	Sure enough, Barrabas could hear the breathless, cursing voice of the old man as he wildly tried to pull himself up Eutychus’s shaking body. All three slid forwards, dragging Barrabas until his arms dangled over the crumbling ledge, taking the full weight of Eutychus and Abdiel. He couldn’t hold on much longer and shouted in desperation.
	‘Abdiel, you’re going to kill us all! Let go, man!’ 
	‘I… am the Emperor’s servant… the… architect of His wrath…’
	The old man’s free hand shook with the effort of pulling up the bolt pistol, levelling it at Barrabas. The captain wasn’t looking, distracted by a fast-moving shape in the sky. It swooped downwards like a dart then, metres away from the dangling shapes, unfolded its wings and thrust out its talons. The bony points punctured Abdiel’s arm and side, punching through his chest plate and violently jolting him free of Eutychus. Carried up and away in a graceful curve, Abdiel fired into the creature, which abruptly released its grip. The commissar’s fading scream ended abruptly and the banshee took its time to descend, safe in the knowledge that its feast was ready to devour on the ground.
	Barrabas desperately heaved Eutychus over the ledge and the two staggered upwards towards the rocky rear and the waiting survivors as large sections of the platform randomly dropped out of sight. The entire column pitched forwards violently as it disintegrated below them, but the noise was drowned out by the sudden roar of engines directly above and the hot wash of exhaust fumes from two Valkyries, their cargo hatches open and hovering as close to the surface as the pilots dared. The men threw themselves inside the ships while Barrabas pushed Eutychus up the nearest ramp just as the ground rose, clanging on the drop-ship’s underside. With all the strength he could muster, Barrabas leaped into the grasping hands of his crew and the column crashed spectacularly downwards, burying Abdiel, the orks and Barrabas’s redoubt under tonnes of rock and dirt.
	As the drop-ship climbed steeply, Barrabas looked down through the open hatchway at the teeming orks who bellowed furiously up at them. Eutychus and the other survivors breathed heavily, nursing their wounds. They had an air about them that he hadn’t seen for the longest time, one of achievement, of victory. But at what cost? 
	Eutychus stared at his boots with fixed, dark eyes, a new, grim set to his jaw that signalled the end of the man’s youthful verve and optimism. Many of the crew had told him that in the Emperor’s service, there was only war, and now he knew it to be true. Looking to the others, the sheer scale of it all knotted the aching muscles in Barrabas’s stomach and he quickly turned his gaze back to the exposed hatch, the loss of his ship and crew sweeping over him like a wave. 
	Breaking cloud cover and banking to port, the Valkyrie’s compartment was flooded with scarlet sunlight just as the heavy metal door began to close, bathing them in brilliance for a few seconds, chasing away the shadows and immediately lifting his soul. The gleaming sun gave him a different perspective. Against all the odds, Jahath Barrabas had won. Glory was his, but far more important was the restoration of his self-belief, of honour for himself and his family. He’d struggled and fought to get off his belly and out of the shadows, to bathe in the light. Now he and his men could stand tall, radiant in the glow of their beloved Emperor. 
	Barrabas smiled.